The man who stood up was well past fifty and going bald and fat. He looked a far cry from the Aryan supermen in the room’s posters and was certainly not the man who had bashed Aaron’s brains out.

“Hail, Aryan brothers and sisters, and welcome to what I hope will be the first and smallest of many meetings. Judging from your comments on VrilBoard, you are all familiar with what the Purity League has accomplished in the past. Let me fill you in on what we plan to accomplish in the near future.”

Bowers went on to talk in a general way about how the Purity League was finally crossing the ocean and setting up cells in various sectors of the U.S. and Canada. He outlined how the League would act as a donor and unifier for the various small, factional groups. This had always been a problem with the movement, he said, too many egos and too many divisions and splinter groups. All that would change, not through any top down enforcement, but through a meeting of the minds via the Purity League.

He made it all sound so rational and simple, how greater unity among the far right would finally wake up the white man to the dangers of international Jewry, Communism, and race mixing. Heinrich writhed as a trickle of sweat ran down his back. He felt the urge to scratch it but he didn’t dare bring attention to himself. The man beside him glanced at him a couple of times before Heinrich noticed his hands were trembling. He clenched them and shoved them in his pockets.

Bowers made a big deal of how well funded the Purity League was, bankrolling the legal defense for a Klan member on trial for killing a black man, building a new meeting room for an Aryan group in Oregon, and providing web hosting to a dozen different groups. For a moment Heinrich wondered if they had gotten the treasure train already, then decided they would have done something far more grandiose with the money. No, the Purity League was already well funded, thanks to people like his grandfather, but the group seemed to have the confidence they’d hit the big leagues soon.

Heinrich discovered he was grinding his teeth. He forced himself to stop and focused on the problem at hand.

Did Bowers know about the murder and did he know about the treasure train? He decided the answer was no on both counts. From what Heinrich had read and seen, the Purity League worked on a cell structure like many radical organizations. For reasons of security, one cell did not know what the other was doing or even who comprised its membership. Bowers would not be standing here giving a speech just twelve blocks from where his organization had murdered someone a few weeks before if he had known anything about it. Bowers had not been told, and the Purity League felt safe enough in their anonymity to raise their heads at a supposedly secure meeting.

Just as Heinrich decided this was a waste of his time, he got the one good kernel of information for the evening.

“And to conclude,” Bowers said, “I would like to call for a moment of silence for a fallen soldier. Dieter Freytag was a proud German living in Greater Germany, the part illegally occupied by Poland. As you know, the Communist element is strong there, and May Day is coming up. Freytag was organizing a counterdemonstration to the May Day parade and was found the day before yesterday stabbed to death outside his home. His struggle is our struggle, and his sacrifice is an example to us all. Dieter Freytag, we salute you.”

Everyone bowed their heads. Heinrich did the same, thinking about how he now had two murders to solve, one committed by the Purity League and one against or perhaps even within the Purity League. He didn’t think for a second that some Polish Communists had done it. The timing was too close to be a coincidence, and the fact that Freytag came from the “German” part of Poland, the same region where the train was supposedly hidden, set off a big alarm in Heinrich’s head.

Things were happening in Poland, and he needed to get there now. When the meeting broke up, he left as soon as courtesy allowed, telling himself that it was the right thing to do and that he wasn’t chickening out of meeting Bowers face to face.

He made it a block from the meeting before he threw up.

CHAPTER FIVE

 

The night before he flew to Warsaw, Heinrich hosted a meeting of the Old Farts Who Love Old Tunes group at his house as a going away party. The Old Farts got started in Philly many years ago as a way for men to get away from their wives, drink whiskey, smoke cigars, and listen to old music. Really old music.